Chen Speech Passes Beijing Test

May 21, 2000|By ERIK ECKHOLM The New York Times

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Only two hours after Taiwan's new president gave his inaugural address, authorities in Beijing released a surprisingly temperate response, charging him with a lack of sincerity but not repeating the dire threats and invective of recent weeks.

In his first speech as president on Saturday, Chen Shui-bian promised that unless the mainland attacked Taiwan, he would not declare independence, change the country's official name of "Republic of China," or take other overt steps to establish Taiwan's formal independence.

Given that Chen had called for just such acts in years past, it was a measure of how far he has traveled to gain support among Taiwan's nervous majority and to avoid provoking Beijing into a military attack.

But Chen, whose Democratic Progressive Party still includes many champions of independence, did not say Taiwan was a part of "one China," as Beijing has repeatedly demanded.

On Saturday night, Taiwan officials were studying China's response even as inaugural parties continued, and did not issue a statement.

But independent experts were intrigued by the lack of expected belligerence and a tantalizing reference to conditions for possible negotiations over economic and other issues.

Beijing considers Taiwan to be a vital part of Chinese territory that was separated during the civil war that ended in 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists fled to Taiwan. Chen, in his newly moderate stance that still leaves Beijing enraged, says Taiwan does not need to declare independence, because in practice it is already a sovereign state.

In recent months, ratcheting up the pressure, Beijing has said that indefinite delay in progress toward reunifying Taiwan with the motherland could be cause for war. It has lambasted Chen, who was elected in March, for failing to adopt "one China" as a starting point in future relations.

At the same time, China says it can grant Taiwan exceptional autonomy, greater than Hong Kong's, if it will only accept the notion of unity.

On Saturday, Chen, in a speech that was mainly devoted to domestic concerns and Taiwan's progress toward democracy, did not discuss reunification, but rather the need to build "conditions for cooperation through good will."